Infant Deaths

Hoping to reduce the number of infant deaths, Los Angeles County officials unveiled a campaign Wednesday to educate parents about how to safely put their babies to sleep. Over the last four years, 278 babies in Los Angeles County have died from suffocating while they were sleeping - more than all other accidental deaths of children under the age of 14, officials said. The deaths are more common among Latino and black babies, officials said. "Accidental suffocation poses the greatest risk for babies from one day to the age of 1," said Deanne Tilton Durfee, executive director of the county Inter-Agency Council on Child Abuse and Neglect.

As a woman's body mass index rises before she is pregnant or early in pregnancy, there is an increased risk of fetal death, stillbirth or infant death, and severely obese women have the highest risk, researchers said Tuesday. But even “modest” increases in BMI were associated with increased risks, the scientists wrote in the Journal of the American Medical Assn. The scientists recommend that women and their caregivers take the findings into account as they consider getting pregnant.

On April 15, 2009, Melissa Pollard's two-month-old son, Jay'Vair, stopped breathing and died inside military housing on this sprawling Army base. Three months later, on July 23, seven-month-old Ka'Mya Frey died suddenly while taking a nap in the same house. The baby was the daughter of Pollard's brother and his fiancee, Bianca Outlaw, who were living temporarily with Pollard and her soldier husband. Only later did Pollard and Outlaw learn from neighbors that another infant who had lived in the same house in 2007 died that year of an undetermined cause while with a babysitter in nearby Fayetteville, N.C. "Unfortunately, our kids died before we had any idea what was going on with them," Outlaw, 20, said Tuesday.

A Los Angeles Superior Court judge cut off a man convicted for his role in the 2007 shooting death of an infant near MacArthur Park as he briefly claimed his innocence at a sentencing hearing Thursday. Juvenal Cardenas Mejia -- a longtime gang "tax collector" who helped set up the shooting after a vendor refused to pay $50 in "rent" for operating in a gang's territory -- was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole. A bullet fired in the attack struck 3-week-old Luis Angel Garcia in the heart.

Babies who die from SIDS are 33% more likely to die on New Year's Day than any other day of the year, a new study finds. Researchers say alcohol use the night before by parents or caretakers may play a role in SIDS deaths. The study from UC San Diego examined 129,090 cases of SIDS, or sudden infant death syndrome, between 1973 and 2006 by using data from the Fatality Analysis Reporting System. It suggests that caregivers who drink alcohol may not be following "safe sleep" recommendations, such as placing infants on their backs to sleep.

Is it really debatable whether or not Beverly Jean Ernst should spend four years in prison? Four years might be considered excessive for someone who would leave a dog in a car on a hot summer day for five hours. But we are not talking about a dog. This situation involved two innocent human beings 3 months of age. One hot summer day Beverly drove her car to visit her boyfriend. She parked her car and left the children locked inside the car while she went inside to take a short nap, but five hours later she awoke to find out that the children she left out in her car had died from the excessive heat.

Federal authorities are concerned about a continuing slowdown in the nation's efforts to improve the infant mortality rate, a new federal study reported. The slowdown threatens to stabilize the U.S. mortality rate above the goal of nine deaths per 1,000 births that has already been bettered by Japan and six nations in Europe.

At least a third of infant deaths in the United States are the direct result of prematurity, double the proportion previously believed, federal researchers report today. Prior data obtained solely from death certificates had indicated that birth defects were the major cause of death among infants in their first year. But linking death certificates with birth certificates, which include gestational age, shows that birth before 37 weeks of gestation plays the dominant role, according to the study.

A judge refused to reduce bail Friday for a Valencia doctor and an unlicensed midwife accused of murder in the deaths of newborn babies, saying she feared that if the defendants were freed they would resume practicing medicine and endanger infants. Dr. Milos Klvana, 47, is awaiting trial on six counts of second-degree murder and one count of involuntary manslaughter in seven infant deaths.

Hoping to reduce the number of infant deaths, Los Angeles County officials unveiled a campaign Wednesday to educate parents about how to safely put their babies to bed. Over the last four years, 278 babies in the county have died from suffocating while they were sleeping - more than all other accidental deaths of children under age 14, officials said. The deaths are more common among Latino and black babies, officials said. "Accidental suffocation poses the greatest risk for babies from 1 day to the age of 1," said Deanne Tilton Durfee, executive director of the county Inter-Agency Council on Child Abuse and Neglect.

JERUSALEM -- A new U.N. report suggests that the Nov. 14 killing of an 11-month-old Gaza baby and two adult relatives during the eight-day clash between Israel and the militant group Hamas was likely caused by an errant Palestinian rocket and not an Israeli airstrike as widely reported. Photos of distraught father Jehad Misharawi holding the body of his son, Omar, became one of the symbols of the conflict's toll on civilians. A March 6 report from the U.N. Office of High Commissioner for Human Rights said the three were killed “by what appeared to be a Palestinian rocket that fell short of Israel.” It offered no details about how it reached the conclusion.

On March 1, 1957, a 7-month-old girl named Jeaneen Marie Klokow died at home. Sheboygan, Wisc., investigators ruled that she'd fallen off her mother's couch by accident. For decades, that was that. Except she'd been killed. And decades would separate the medical advances and nagging consciences that resulted in her mother's guilty plea to second-degree murder in Sheboygan on Monday morning. “It's really an incredible thing,” Sheboygan County District Atty. Joe DeCecco said by phone on Monday, and he would know: Prosecuting someone nearly 56 years after the fact required improvisation.

Four major national retailers - including Amazon.com, Toys R Us/Babies R Us, Buy Buy Baby and Diapers.com - are voluntarily recalling more than 150,000 Nap Nanny baby recliners after reports of at least five infant deaths. At the request of the Consumer Product Safety Commission, a government agency, the companies said they are calling back Nap Nanny Generations One and Two as well as the Chill model of the recliner. The products, according to the agency, “contain defects in the design, warnings and instructions, which pose a substantial risk of injury and death to infants.” Aside from the fatalities, the agency said it received nearly 100 of reports of children hanging out or nearly falling over the sides of the seats, despite usually being placed in a harness.

With the nation's attention focused on dire news about whooping cough, parents' inclination may be to hustle their children -- or themselves -- in for a booster shot. Will there be a run on the whooping cough vaccine? If there is, doctors should be able to handle the demand. The supply of whooping cough -- or pertussis -- vaccines is fine, according to a spokesman with the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta. "The CDC is not aware of any supply issues as far as vaccines that protect against pertussis," said Thomas Skinner in an email to the Los Angeles Times on Friday morning.

For months, people have been trudging out of the desert, leaving their dead children behind and carrying those who have managed to survive. On Wednesday, the horror of hunger and death unfolding in the Horn of Africa officially got a name: famine. It's actually a very technical term, unless you're one of those walking for weeks in a last-ditch hope to save your family. For the United Nations to declare a famine, as it did at a news conference in Nairobi, Kenya, the rate of child malnutrition must be at 30% or higher, daily deaths at two per 10,000 people and people not have access to food and other basic necessities.